The suicide attack last March by a supposed Afghan ally was a sign of what was in store for Maj. Gen. Charles “Mark” Gurganus during his year in charge of international troops in southwestern Afghanistan.

Two days after the Camp Pendleton Marine took command, Gurganus and his British deputy were nearly run down by an Afghan interpreter employed at the airfield adjoining their main base.

The man stole a truck and sped down the tarmac at Camp Bastion, where Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had just landed in an unmarked plane. Gurganus and the welcome party scattered as the truck crashed into a ditch.

The attack was blown out of proportion in the eyes of the commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and some 30,000 NATO troops in Helmand and Nimroz provinces.

The Afghan man, who died after setting himself on fire, had no way of knowing the defense secretary was nearby, Gurganus told U-T San Diego during a broad-ranging interview looking back on the Camp Pendleton force’s year in command. East Coast Marines are preparing to take command in coming weeks.

Yet the attack was a metaphor for a critical turning point in the war. Gurganus and his command staff had to dart in new directions amid rapid changes and gathering threats. They also were tested by a spike in “insider attacks” by rogue Afghans that, while relatively few in number, made an impact in the war of perceptions and eroded public support at home.

Most of the “surge” of 33,000 U.S. troops sent to Afghanistan in 2010 went to southwestern Afghanistan, where the Marine force doubled to a high of about 21,000. Helmand has been by far the deadliest area of the country for coalition troops, accounting for nearly 900 out of more than 3,250 deaths since the war began in 2001.

In preparation for the end of the U.S. combat mission in 2014, Gurganus and his staff coordinated the withdrawal of about two-thirds of the Marine force and most of the Corps’ warfighting equipment, even as heavy combat continued in remote pockets of Helmand province.

This part of the country, like all of Afghanistan, has been scarred by decades of war. It is also riven by a fractured network of tribes and displaced migrants. Drug smugglers, gun runners and insurgents traverse the desert bordering Pakistan. Illegal poppy crops along the fertile Helmand river valley supply most of the world’s opium, funding the insurgency and organized crime. Poverty and a scarcity of roads make it easier to bury homemade bombs in dirt paths and byways.

“You’re dealing not only with insurgents, you deal with the narco-criminal here, you deal with corruption here. It is a far more complex environment than Al Anbar province of Iraq ever hoped to be,” said Gurganus, who served in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2007 and 2008.

Drawdown

Out of 193 coalition bases in the region, 148 were closed or transferred last year to Afghan control.

The combat mission also shifted several times, from leading counterinsurgency operations to pushing Afghan national forces out front last summer to the recent step further back, forcing them to fight and supply themselves for the most part independently other than medevac and heavy fire support.

The changes were years in the making, but they came to a head last fall when the coalition turned off the spigot of food, water and ammunition and sent many Marines home.

Marine commanders leading infantry battalions from Southern California assigned to Musa Qala and Sangin conceded it was an uncertain transition — like giving your teenager the keys to the car for the first time.

“Marines are always looking for a good firefight, and when they deployed out here they were under that mind-set, ‘Hey, we are going to seek and destroy the enemy,’” recalled Sgt. Maj. Harrison Tanksley, senior enlisted leader for the southwest regional command. “We had to take a step back and allow the ANA (Afghan National Army) to get out in front, and that required some patience on our part.”

At least twice, Afghan commanders called in the middle of the night saying they needed immediate air support or many would die. Because of poor weather, they had to fend for themselves but did fine, Gurganus said.

“When we pulled the largest number of Marines out, there was real concern on all of their faces. If you talked to some of the leaders, they said, we are going to fail, we are going to fail. We told them, we just don’t think you will, but we will be there if you have to have us.

“It was no time at all before they started realizing they could stand up on their own. ... It has really been amazing how little we have had to do to bail them out.”

The somewhat counterintuitive pullback in the most violent area of Afghanistan was orchestrated by Gen. John Allen, the Marine who led the war campaign until last week.

Allen wanted the Afghans to get used to fighting on their own while a significant number of foreign troops remained to backstop them if needed.

Nearly a third of Afghan infantry battalions in the Helmand region are considered capable of independent operations coupled with U.S. advisers, up from none at the beginning of last year, the southwestern NATO command reported. A fourth brigade of Afghan soldiers began arriving last fall in Helmand, where 16,000 soldiers and more than 12,000 police are now fielded.

As the Marines pulled back, the Taliban overran some positions. But Afghan forces were able to retake all of them on their own, the Marines said.

Afghan troops absorbed a much higher share of casualties in the region last year — about 800 were killed, more than 10 times the number of coalition troops. But overall, violence was down from 15,271 incidents in 2011 to 12,214 in 2012. Despite spikes in two areas, Kajaki and Nad Ali, most other districts in southwestern Afghanistan had fewer attacks in 2012 compared with 2011, including the most violent in the country, Nahr-e Saraj.

However, the Marines suffered painful losses that hit them on both a strategic and a personal level.

Insider attacks

A relatively small number of tactically insignificant insider attacks against coalition troops by Afghan national forces were a strategic victory for the insurgency because of political fallout added to the unpopular war 11 years after it began.

In 2012, 61 were killed in insider attacks compared with 35 in 2011, according to NATO statistics.

The turncoat killings played much louder on the homefront than they did in Helmand province, but Afghan commanders understood the potential implications, Gurganus said.

“They did not want to see the acts of a very few destroy all the progress they had made, and much of it with the help of the coalition forces,” he said.

On advice from the top local Afghan army commander, Marine advisers living among Afghan counterparts were relocated to coalition sleeping quarters, said Maj. Gen. David Berger, the Marine ground forces commander who worked closely with Afghan army and police.

Maj. Gen. Sayed Malouk, commanding general of the 215th Afghan National Army Corps, said, “We work very closely together every day and it’s a good thing,” Berger recalled. “But if we are around each other 24 hours a day, we are such different cultures it is hard for something not to be misinterpreted.”

Malouk also toured bases speaking at length to his soldiers about the sacrifices coalition forces had made, about why they should fight for their country, and the true message of the Muslim holy book, the Koran. Where do you think your boots came from? Your weapons? Do you know how many people they have lost here, fighting to help our country?

“It was pretty touching,” Gurganus recalled, and effective: “It had a huge impact. We had a very, very sharp drop-off not only of the attacks but those kinds of threats.”

Infiltration

The most spectacular attack last year in Helmand province did not appear to be an inside job by rogue forces, but 15 heavily armed insurgents who infiltrated Camp Bastion the night of Sept. 14 dressed in old U.S. Army uniforms. Coalition forces on the flight line, most of them from the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing who deployed from San Diego County and Yuma, dropped their wrenches and flight logs and battled the insurgents. They killed all but one, who was captured and interrogated.

Lt. Col. Scott Raible, the commanding officer of a Harrier squadron who led the counterattack, was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade explosion. Another Marine, Sgt. Bradley Atwell, also died. Six of the Corps’ irreplaceable AV-8B vertical landing fighter jets were destroyed and two more heavily damaged — a more than $200 million loss.

No one was fired or removed from command because of the attack, Gurganus said, bristling at the question.

No one did anything wrong, he said, and there was no failure in security procedures to protect the base.

“What you had is you had enemy who got their part of it right and then the reaction of the Marines and soldiers over there was brilliant to contain it,” Gurganus said.

Remaining challenges

About 7,000 Marines remain in southwestern Afghanistan. Their numbers will undoubtedly diminish next year under the command of Marine Maj. Gen. Lee Miller. How fast has not been decided, Gurganus said.

The U.S. and NATO combat mission is scheduled to end by late 2014. In the interim, the situation in Helmand is mixed.

Among the challenges reported by the United Nations: Despite intensive eradication and crop substitution programs, poppy cultivation rose last year in Afghanistan amid high opium prices; the number of Afghans paying bribes dropped from 58 percent in 2009 to 50 percent last year, but they paid nearly $4 billion for public services, a 40 percent increase; and civilian casualties continued at a devastating clip — despite a 15 percent drop in the first six months of 2012 — including a dramatic rise in attacks on schools educating girls. Anti-government elements were responsible for 80 percent of the casualties, the U.N. said.

In Helmand, governance and economic development are now the biggest hurdles, not security, the Marines said. Amid the bright spots: 10 of Helmand’s 14 districts have governors, and the numbers of judges has more than doubled.

But the ability of the government to deliver basic services, such as electricity, education, water and courts, lags far behind security improvements, Berger said.

“If the government steps in to fill that void and the officials are accountable ... they will be fine,” Berger predicted. “Their security forces are an absolute overmatch for the threat. I don’t see any chance of the Taliban rolling back in there and taking over.”

The insurgent sanctuary across the border in Pakistan complicates Afghanistan’s future, but does not in his view make it untenable. “Until that is resolved, they are going to be in a fight long after we continue our drawdown.”

One promising sign is an increased willingness of Helmand residents to defy the Taliban, Marine commanders said.

In January, the Helmand governor’s office announced that residents of the Alokozoo area of Nahr-e Saraj drove insurgents out after a tribal leader was beaten, farms were laced with bombs and crop irrigation was cut off. Police added security checkpoints in the area and villagers formed a local defense unit.

“That’s when this thing ends,” Gurganus said. “We can’t win this war. I think while the tool they will use to win will be their own security forces, the fighting here is really over when the people decide that it’s over. ... When they actually stand up to them, that’s when the insurgency ends.”